A Negus is a rarely encountered drink these days, reputedly invented by
Colonel Francis Negus (1670–1732). Its defining characteristic is the dilution of wine with sugar and boiling water.
I tale my recipe for a Port Wine Negus from Richard Cook’s “
Oxford Night Caps — Being a Collection of Receipts for Making Various Beverages used in the University” first published in 1827. For him, the Port Negus is a variant on the standard White Wine recipe as follows:
WHITE WINE NEGUS.
Extract the juice from the peeling of one lemon, by rubbing loaf sugar on it ; or cut the peeling of a lemon extremely thin, and pound it in a mortar. Cut two lemons into thin slices ; four glasses of calves-feet jelly in a liquid state ; small quantities of cinnamon, mace, cloves, and all-spice. Put the whole into a jug, pour one quart of boiling water upon it, cover the jug close, let it stand a quarter of an hour, and then add one bottle of boiling hot white wine. Grate half a nutmeg into it, stir it well together, sweeten it to your taste, and it is fit for use.
Seville oranges are not generally used at Oxford in making Negus ; when they are, one orange is allowed to each bottle of wine.
PORT WINE NEGUS.
In making port wine Negus, merely omit the jelly ; for when port wine comes in contact with calves-feet jelly, it immediately assumes a disagreeable muddy appearance.
(It is worth noting that by the time of
Jerry Thomas’ legendary 1862 “Bar-Tender’s Guide” (often thought of the first book of cocktails), he suggests a pale imitation of Cook’s recipe where Port is poured over a third-of-a-glass of boiling water and then grated with nutmeg.)
I confess, in making the Port Wine Negus tonight I didn’t quite follow the recipe. Rather than boiling my Port, I merely heated it to 60°C so that it retained its alcohol. The result, however, is really rather good. The nutmeg, in particular, gives it a bracing medicinal quality almost towards a aromatised wine or vermouth. It lacks the cloyingly sweet or excessively alcoholic tastes of some mulled wines, glühwein and gløgg / glögg.
The history also interests me. I assume by the 1820s that the fortification debate had been resolved against Joseph Forrester and so “Port Wine” meant something fortified but I am not quite sure if “Port Wine”, without any further adjectives, meant something like a modern tawny or something with a bit of wood like a modern basic / reserve tawny. For the record, the M&S Ruby Reserve (in addition to being a very acceptable Ruby Reserve in its own right) works admirably.
Apologies if the photographs for this post come in a random order: I have long given up on getting phpBB to sort them out...